As soon as they come close, and you can see the gleam in their eye (and the accompanying twitch in their fingers) you know that you are about to fall prey to “the touch”. You brace yourself and consider, once again, that there are two ways of handling this situation.

One, to grimly grin and bear it as someone; a close friend, distant acquaintance, or complete stranger tweaks and fondles your latest prized purchase. To ignore the tiny voices screaming in your head reminding you that the tweaker’s fingers have the potential to have touched anything in the last few minutes (especially disturbing at a cocktail party where it’s a 99.9% certainty that those very fingers were recently clasped around something tasty yet stain inducing) and the remaining traces of grease/grime/dirt are now being transferred onto your new bag/sweater/skirt.

The other option, that of reflexive recoil or anguished gasp of dissent may save your wardrobe but, admittedly, has the potential to leave you friendless (and probably not invited back to future parties).

Perhaps the only sure way to preserve both your closet and your companions is to assume the offensive, turn from tweaked to tweaker, and let others live in fear of you.